Do I Need a CSR Tool? Or Is It a Waste of Money?

You would be hard-pressed today to find a company, employee or consumer with zero interest in corporate social responsibility.

Much of this change is driven by millennials, who already represent nearly $2.5 trillion in spending power and will soon be the largest generation in the American workforce.

Despite the pervasive myths of millennial entitlement, 70% of this generation is willing to spend more with companies that support causes they care about. Nearly two-thirds of millennials would prefer to work for a company with a corporate social responsibility program.

Given those statistics, it’s no surprise that savvy businesses and corporations have taken note. Corporate social responsibility is an important way to show that your company is walking the walk of your core values.

And yet, the idea persists that a corporate social responsibility tool is not a necessity. In fact, many companies may even consider it a luxury.

They’re wrong. Let us tell you why:

If You Have a Corporate Social Responsibility Program, You Need a Tool

A good corporate social responsibility tool will help to power every aspect of your program.

The right tool will make it easier to implement, track, receive changes, and make improvements to your program.

You need to be able to measure employee engagement and make decisions about the future of your program with that data. But if all the data you have is simply who gave how much to which organization, you're lacking more information than you have. You need more data.

The World Lives and Dies with Data

There’s no denying it—nowadays, numbers are everything. Your corporate social responsibility tool will give you all the compelling data you want and more.

Yes, you can easily find out how many employees are participating and how much they are giving, and which causes and organizations matter to them most. With the right tool, you can effortlessly pull the data you need for reports to determine the efficacy of your existing program. You can even receive feedback from your employees about why they are giving or what is holding them back.

You Get What You Put Into It

As with any tool, and really anything in life, you get what you put into it. You can get the most out of your CSR tool if you are willing to put effort into it.

Could you track the amount of employee giving with a spreadsheet or work something out with your current HR software? Yeah, probably. But it would only measure what’s being done at the moment.

A quality CSR tool will provide insight into what really matters to your employees. You can find out what causes are important to your employees, even if they are not currently giving.

For example, what if one of your employees selects that they are interested in causes that help animals, but doesn’t set up a donation? How do you encourage them to give?

Well, that depends on why they chose not to donate.

Maybe they care about animals but are not sure which charities they trust. The right giving tool can connect employees with local charitable organizations that help animals.

Or perhaps they want to support a local animal shelter, but don’t believe their small donation will make a difference. Again, with the right CSR tool, they can see what how small gifts across the company are adding up to big change.

Simply tracking numbers on a spreadsheet won’t do any of that. It won't even tell you that your employee cares about animals!

Conclusion

Connect with your employees when you connect them with causes that resonate with them personally.

A great corporate social responsibility tool does a lot more than track what you and your employees are doing. It facilitates effective employee giving. It allows you to effortlessly access data to show successes and identify pain points. It even lets your employees tell you what is working (and what isn’t) and why.

If a corporate social responsibility program isn’t a luxury, then a strong corporate social responsibility tool isn’t either. Whether you are building a corporate social responsibility program from scratch or looking to improve the one you have, at Encast we can help. Give us a call today to find out how!

James Moore runs communications and whatever else is needed for Encast. He is a New York Times best-selling author. Seriously. And is working on his seventh book. He also talks on MSNBC some times about politics. And knows more about Texas than is healthy. He loves motorcycles, too, and is presently obsessed with making Encast great. Don’t let him bore you talking about West Texas and the desert.

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